Alliance Formed to Develop Cancer Therapeutic Antibodies

An alliance has been initiated to discover, develop, and market novel therapeutic antibodies for the treatment of primary, metastatic, and recurring forms of cancer.

Under the alliance, GlaxoSmithKline (GSK; London, UK) will develop novel antibody therapies against selected OBT targets. In parallel, Oxford BioTherapeutics, Ltd. (OBT; Abington, Oxon, UK) will develop one of its own monoclonal antibodies through to clinical proof of concept, at which point GSK will have an exclusive option to in-license this monoclonal antibody and will thereafter assume responsibility for additional clinical development and marketing on a worldwide basis.

OBT will receive an undisclosed upfront payment and will be eligible for up to a total of US$370 million upon the achievement of specified discovery, development, regulatory, and commercialization milestones. In addition to the upfront and milestone payments, OBT will receive double-digit royalties on sales of any product that it develops to clinical proof of concept and single-digit royalties on worldwide sales of marketed GSK antibody products aimed at OBT targets. Furthermore, OBT may opt to carry forward the OBT or GSK collaboration programs that GSK chooses not to develop further.

The alliance integrates OBT's expertise in the discovery of novel oncology targets and therapeutic antibody discovery with GSK's in-house therapeutic antibody discovery and development capabilities. OBT's antibody discovery platform builds on its OGAP (Oxford Genome Anatomy Project) proteomic database, which represents one of the world's largest proprietary human protein collections including data on 5,000 cancer membrane proteins combined with highly disease relevant genomic and clinical data derived from human blood and cancer tissue studies.

"We are extremely pleased to be collaborating with GSK given their proven commitment to innovation and their expertise in the development and commercialization of novel oncology medicines,” said Christian Rohlff, CEO of OBT.

"This strategic alliance provides important validation of our scientific expertise in the fields of cancer target discovery and broadens OBT's antibody pipeline. In addition, we gain access to significant nondilutive financing to support the development of our pipeline of fully human therapeutic antibodies which we believe have the potential to significantly impact clinically unmet needs in certain important cancer indications.”

Oxford BioTherapeutics is focused on the development of targeted medicines for oncology. OBT's strategy is to develop innovative antibody-based cancer drugs, with integrated diagnostics, against novel targets that it has discovered in its unique OGAP proteomic database.

The Oxford Genome Anatomy Project (OGAP) database represents the world's largest proprietary collection of disease-associated proteins. It integrates genomic, proteomic, and clinical information derived from blood and tissue studies for a large number of diseases from 50 different human tissues representing 60 diseases and contains over one million peptide sequences, mapped to approximately 15,000 genes, combined with over eight million single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) and haplotypes. OGAP oncology contains proteomic data on 5,000 cancer membrane proteins combined with their genomic and clinical information derived from human blood and cancer tissue studies.

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